Alex

the first and primary function of the card was to identify buyer to seller and seller to buyer. [...] The seller would receive good funds in local currency and the buyer would be billed later in the currency of their country. Thus, the second primary function was as guarantor of the value data. Clearly, it warranted to both buyer and sell

No part knew the whole, the whole did not know all the parts, and none had any need to.

Understanding events and influencing the future requires mastering of four ways of looking at things: as they were, as they are, as they might become, and as they ought to be.

Why are organizations, everywhere, political, commercial, and social, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?

Why are individuals, everywhere, increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they are part?

Why are society and the biosphere increasingly in disarray?

It comes down to both an individual and collective sense of where and how people choose to be led. In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led.

Nor is corporate power restricted to power over the employed. Global corporations now have implicit sovereignty over people throughout the world, since they are beyond the reach of any nation-state. [...] They do so by the simple expedient of bargaining one government against another for the claimed economic benefit of their presence.

Many took the openness and liberty of Visa as applicable to them, but not in relation to those over whom they had authority.

the essence of community, its very heart and soul, is the nonmonetary exchange of value [...] It arises from deep, intuitive, understanding that self-interest is inseparably connected with community interest